do-over!

i'm an "athletic" guy.  i've always enjoyed different sports, getting in the mix, & having some fun.  i can't say that i'm great at any sport but i can at least compete in a lot of them.  

i grew up in a the stereotypical american home with a basketball hoop out on the driveway.  there were many times that i would go out & spend an hour or so just shooting around, practicing free throws, and the legendary last-3-second-3-point attempt to win the game.  sometimes when my friends would come over we would play the game "around the world" where you have to make a basket from different spots on the driveway before you could move on to the next spot.  the objective was to make your way around to every spot & back before anyone else did.  you had 1 shot attempt at each spot - if you made it, you moved on.  if you missed you could stay there & be "safe" or risk a 2nd attempt.  if you missed that 2nd try, you had to go all the way back to the beginning.  there were many times during those games where 1 of us would miss and quickly shout out "DO OVER!"

do-overs are sweet.  what ever it is that you just messed up, you to get to delete, forget about, laugh at, and then try again.  it's like the dry erase boards or old chalk boards we had in our classrooms in school.  if you messed up, you just erase & do over.

have you ever wondered why people love New Years so much?  i mean, think about this:  people from all over the world show up in NYC to see a giant light bulb slide down a pole for 10 seconds & then once it hits the bottom, millions of tons of shredded paper shower down on a crowd.  why?!  does january 1 have an extra 2 hours in it? or do all mortgage payments drop by 35%?  may it's because on january 1, our family finally forgets all the things that they have been mad at us about.  in my limited scientific understanding, there is nothing different on or about january 1 than any other day in the calendar year... other than the idea of a huge do-over.

we love do-overs.  no matter who you are, where you're from, what your family was like or the education you got, we all love the idea of do-overs!  God has designed that desire for do-overs into our core of what it means to be human.  God offers the ultimate do-over by offering a new life to us through his son, Jesus.

whether you do/did the "church thing" or not, that doesn't matter.  we all love fresh starts & we can have one today.  

do-overs are permitted today.  i checked.